Coalition Praises Rim Fire Logging Plan

Excerpt from Modesto Bee article by John Holland
September 3, 2014

Salvage logging planned for the Rim fire area has won praise from a Tuolumne County coalition that includes environmentalists, the timber industry and other partners. The group agreed that the plan, approved last week by Stanislaus National Forest Supervisor Susan Skalski, strikes the right balance between protecting the land and marketing some of the trees charred in last year’s massive blaze.

Some environmental leaders have said the logging would harm the soil and the types of wildlife that thrive in newly burned areas. Chad Hanson, a forest ecologist and founder of the John Muir Project near Grass Valley, called it “an ecological travesty.”

A different response came from the coalition, known as Yosemite Stanislaus Solutions because of its interest in the national park and adjacent national forest. “The Forest Service plan is a good, balanced compromise solution,” co-chairman John Buckley said in an email to The Modesto Bee. He said the logging, planned for about an eighth of the burn zone, would leave plenty of habitat and watershed untouched while removing some of the dead wood that could fuel more fires.

Mike Albrecht, an industry forester and co-chairman of the coalition, agreed that the national forest plan is on target. Albrecht is president of Sierra Resource Management, based near Jamestown. Buckley is the executive director of the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center, based in Twain Harte. They have disagreed on some forest issues in the past but have worked together on the salvage issue, as well as thinning of live timber in certain other areas to reduce the fire danger.